Yesterday was the 35th birthday of the ZX Spectrum... while over on Kickstarter a brand new version of this machine, which was meant to be dead and buried, subsumed beneath generations of more advanced technology, is being born. At the time of writing, the ZX Spectrum Next has been backed to the tune of a quarter of a million groats.

How is that possible? How could this three-and-a-half decades old system still be alive? Even at the time, the Spectrum wasn't the most powerful machine. The first iteration was a weird little thing with scarcely enough power, a keyboard made of dolphin flesh, and a tendency to scream at you whenever it loaded software.

Alright, every Commodore 64 game was created in Brownaround, but let's settle it once and for all: of course it was the more powerful machine. Likewise the BBC. Doesn't mean they were the best. Much as it pains me to say it, the Spectrum should never have been the phenomenon it was - and yet... somehow it booted the competition into a latrine.

Sir Clive Sinclair might've been a very clever man with a taste for ladyblondes, but the success of the Spectrum was down to two things: timing, and the imagination of the burgeoning British games industry.

I can think of no better tribute to my most beloved games machine than to list my ten favourite Spectrum games. Please note: this is not a definitive list.

PYJAMARAMA

I never played Automania, the first game in the Wally Week series. Pyjamarama was incredible though - taking the basic Jet Set Willy format, and giving it a massive punch in ther arm. Huge sprites, incredible graphics, and mini games built into the rooms of the surreal, nightmarish mansion you were exploring. Also: a tongue very much in its cheek.

Pyjamarama had something which - I've come to realise - is behind my love for many of my favourite Spectrum games; a certain quirky British sense of humour. It certainly explains why the Spectrum never really took off overseas; its games were made here, and reflected that. The follow-up to Pyjamarama, Everyone's A Wally, was even more parochial, with its depiction of British high streets - complete with red phone boxes, and post offices.

Back then, no concessions were made to maximising international sales like they are now. That Britishness is something that has been lost in the globalisation of gaming.

​Oh, how I weep for my country...

VALHALLA

I loved me a graphic adventure, but Valhalla wasn't like all the others. The characters you encountered would wander the legendary Norse realms randomly, as you sought to collect magical artefacts.

​Frankly, I never really knew what I was meant to be doing in Valhalla. I just liked the fact you could instruct your character to throw any object at any other character.

"Throw helmet at Thor..."

Also: if you typed in a swear word, you'd receive the message "Mary is not amused", and be punched in the testicles by a dwarf (Mary, presumably). That alone made up for the obtuseness of the "plot".

SKOOL DAZE

Skool Daze and Back 2 Skool were the Spectrum games I played more than any other. There was an overarching objective in both, but I - like, I suspect, most players - simply enjoyed its simulation of British school life. You could scrawl filth on the blackboards, knock down teachers and pin it on the school swot, and bunk off lessons.

Also: we all had a version of Skool Daze's Mr Withit didn't we? Ours was called Mr Langrish, and he used to perch on the corner of the girls' desks waiting for them to arrive for his graphical communications lessons. Of course, we all assumed he was a lech, so imagine our surprise when we later found out that he was gay.

Apropos nothing, he once told me I'd need "special attention", because I'd designed a carton for something called "Cheese Drink".

I saw him last year, singing in a carol concert, along with my old woodwork and PE teachers. That was a bit weird.

UNDERWURLDE

I couldn't make this list without including at least one Ultimate game, and for me it had to be Underwurlde.

As impressive as Knight Lore and Alien 8 were, I always found them too difficult and slow. Underwurlde is also similarly impossible to complete, but the means by which you explored its caverns was a joy in itself - bouncing around like a pinball, and lowering yourself on a rope, just like real cavejohnsons (potholers) do.

So many of my favourite Spectrum games were about exploring big spaces, otherwise devoid of human life. Underwurlde was that writ large.

STARGLIDER

I remember getting this for Christmas 1986. I'd already loved the Spectrum version of the Star Wars arcade game, but Starglider took it to another level. The wireframe visuals required a lot of imagination to fill in the blanks, but the sparseness of the graphics gave it a unique atmosphere.

It was designed by Jez San, who I later interviewed for Digitiser. I rarely got starstruck meeting developers, but I believe I was slightly excited at the thought of meeting "Jez".

I recall thanking him for the game which had given so many hours of pleasure. He didn't seem particularly interested by my gratitude, and remained focused on showing us a magic pen that he'd bought in Japan.

JET SET WILLY

Another game I'd be remiss to include, Jet Set Willy never had the best visuals, but the darkly surreal nature of Matthew Smith's creation was no doubt a huge impactful on my sense of humour.

I never finished it... it was yet another unforgiving Spectrum game... but those times when I'd get further into Willy's mansion than I had before were a thrill - like descending into madness.

​There was something incredibly seductive and mysterious about the names of the various rooms; The Forgotten Abbey, Entrance to Hades, At The Foot Of The Mega Tree... They evoked something beyond the boundaries of the game.

ANT ATTACK

It might not have looked as good as Ultimate's isometric games, but for me Ant Attack was far more successful in terms of gameplay. The empty city was dripping with atmosphere, and the simple objective - rescue the girl or boy - was more straightforward.

​In some respects, it's the first survival horror game; isometric view, limited ammo, a creepy, abandoned location... and horrible mutant monsters. Sandy White's follow-up, Zombie Zombie, basically did the same thing all over again, but with the undead. Wasn't as good.

URBAN UPSTART

I was never one for reading books as a kid, but I loved text adventures. The economy of their words could say so much with so little; my imagination would always fill in the blanks.

Urban Upstart felt real to me, the object being to escape from a grim British town. It had no truck with fantasy settings - one of the reasons The Hobbit never really gelled with me - and the bleakness of its humour once again seemed to reflect the country I grew up in.

​I'd love to know whether it would've been anywhere near as evocative for an American kid, who'd been born under palm trees and blue skies with a hotdog in their gob.

SPACE HARRIER

I've not played this since it was released, but at the time I remember it being a pretty damn good conversion of Sega's arcade classic. The graphics risked inducing an epileptic fit, but the 3D effect of the chessboard landscape felt like it was pushing the Spectrum to the very precipice of its power.

Also, whatever happened to "Programmer Keith"?

TRASHMAN

Once more, this felt like a game which was drawn from the world I knew. It seemed to depict the flipside of something like Urban Upstart - the not-quite-belonging sense of wandering into a more upmarket part of town, or visiting the home of a middle class friend with rich parents.

It reminded me of the time some posh people shouted at me because I was riding my bike and shrieking near their house, and their baby was trying to get to sleep, even though it was only, like half four in the afternoon.

"Do you live round here?"

"No."

"Then go away."

​I had the last laugh though; I went back later and set fire to their house!!!

I was big on the Speccy, but seem to have missed all the real classics. Or just didn't really like the cut of their gib. My top ten would be an odd bunch. Don't think I can remember 10 faves now, but, for instance: International Cricket (covertape, played to death), Emlyn Hughes Int Soccer (man, it was frustrating), Match Day II, Rebelstar (and II, probably), Turbo Esprit and the Kicking Sheep game that was part of some desert island escape thing.

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Rawce

24/4/2017 12:48:31 pm

Rapscallion on my cousins' speccy is the one memory that stands out the most for me, playing it non-stop over a number of summers. Gotta love all eight colours.

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Spectrum - like of colours!

24/4/2017 01:47:53 pm

I always thought green was a bit lackluster

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Leigh

24/4/2017 01:08:16 pm

Mr. Langrish sounds like a hip dude. I once had some wanky media lesson where we were all asked to design a new brand of deodorant. Instead I designed an anti-deodorant called Stink-Pits (complete with smell lines) and Miss Davies accused me of having "a sick mind".

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Mr Biffo

24/4/2017 08:16:39 pm

I just done a LOL.

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Tinker's Cuss

24/4/2017 01:09:05 pm

I still play a few Speccy games now and again, on my NDS of all things, and therefore must be my favourites of all time ever:
Chaos, Laser Squad, Daley Thomson's Supertest, Dan Dare 2, Jetpac, Scuba, Cyclone and Exolon.

To take it up to ten, I've also got the Lords of Midnight & Doomdark's Revenge remakes on my iThing. Love me some Speccy, I do.

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RichardM

24/4/2017 01:12:54 pm

You're right about the Britishness thing, Speccy would have been dull without it.

Anyway... Cybernoid, Marauder and something Dizzy - Magicland, probably? - for me. And all the slightly odd Mr. Micro games, like Treausre Island and Punchy. Also the Edd the Duck game I won by writing in to Buster, I think (it was shit, but it was free).

Don't forget that british game where you had to keep bringing cups of the tea to the Queen whilst wearing a bowler hat and standing in a queue in the rain.

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Dr

24/4/2017 03:21:27 pm

Fable?

Clive Peppard

24/4/2017 01:31:21 pm

Booty.

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Carlos Nightman

24/4/2017 01:36:20 pm

How many Spectrum games did anyone honestly complete? I think I finished a couple of the Dizzy game, Bruce Lee, Puff The Magic Dragon. But that's three or four out of the few hundred that I had. Then again, I was only about eight years old and had no idea what I was doing.
Other Like Me Dos - NOMAD, Knightmare, the Quattro series, Scuba Diver, some weird five a side football game where you played in the streets and seemed to be more about fighting and kicking the ball over fences instead of scoring goals, Gift From The Gods etc.
There's a good youtube channel which uploads footage of thousands of spectrum games - https://www.youtube.com/user/zxspectrumgames4

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RichardM

24/4/2017 01:47:35 pm

Yeah, agreed: I was between about 4 and 8 when I did most of my Spectrum playing. Didn't have a fucking clue. I'm a bit surprised at my dad's lack of quality control in his game choices, too... We didn't have any Ultimate games, or Jet Set Willy. He mustn't have bothered with the magazine reviews... As above, most of the stuff we had is from the very early 80s and a bit cack.

Wasn't until the SNES came out that I really had a notion what was going on.

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Johnny

24/4/2017 02:13:13 pm

Street Gang Football?

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Carlos Nightman

24/4/2017 04:38:57 pm

That sounds familiar, but I could just as easily be mixing up memories with stuff that I made up at the time to tell my mates, and now 20 odd years later it's all messed up. I remember this one with greater clarity - Mailstrom, about a psychotic Posty called Postman Nasty.

MrPSB

24/4/2017 01:44:32 pm

Also as well as timing and games, way cheaper than all its competition.

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Meatballs-me-branch-me-do

24/4/2017 02:19:59 pm

Re: Britishness, one of their most Britishy games ever, Constructor, is getting an HD remake very very soon (like, this week). Build your own council estate! For some reason, they are trying to appeal to that international audience with a Chicago mob voiceover, but the UK trailer has actual Boycie from Only Fools.

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Bisckies

24/4/2017 04:09:01 pm

I had no idea! On my radar now, cheers

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Barry

24/4/2017 02:20:06 pm

Nice peice apart from the last sentence.

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Laslux

24/4/2017 02:45:51 pm

Move on Barry, it's been years. So your dog was indoors at the time, how was he to know you even had a dog?

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Davedebig

24/4/2017 07:20:14 pm

The last sentence made me physically sick 6 times. I am now unable to process frozen peas or spell franfrance.

Scott Borthwick

24/4/2017 02:27:19 pm

Great list. I'd have gone with Deathchase and Sabre Wulf (the only game of that type I ever completed). I still play Chaos and Rebelstar on an emulator. Boulder Dash, Jetpac, Manic Miner, Nemesis the Warlock, Saboteur and Elite.

Honourable mentions to Bugaboo the Flea and Arcadia, my very first Speccy game. My brother also wrote a simple Tron lightbikes game that we played to death.

Such an incredible range of games. I'm still surprised at what could be achieved with the Spectrum.

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Programmer Keith

24/4/2017 04:52:22 pm

Thank you for asking about what happened to me. Here is what happened:

I gave up programming games, and have spent the past two decades living Derby, trying to invent a new flavour of crisps to take the world by storm.

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Gary Linekar

24/4/2017 05:02:36 pm

Crabstick and fennel

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Kendall9000

24/4/2017 06:41:09 pm

I never owned a Speccy - being properly middle class I played the likes of Jet Set Willy in style on my BBC Model B. Most of mates owned C64s, CPCs or games consoles. I think the first Speccy I played with was a neighbour's +3, right at the end of the 8 bit era, when all the cool kids owned Amigas.

Where I did spend hours playing Spectrum games was on my Psion organiser. My memories of most of them are in monochrome with no sound, stretched to fit a murky green & black 640 × 240 display.

I guess the favourites I associate with the Speccy are later releases like Laser Squad, Academy: Tau Ceti II, and Where Time Stood Still, rather than the early 80s 'classics'. Looking back, it's amazing what they got running on that colour clashing shitbox.

I was a Commodore kid (cid?) but I still have a great deal of fondness for the Speccy the 48K is a wonderful bit of compact design and I loved some of the games.

Skool Daze was brilliant, and I spent hours playing Saboteur, until my older brother kicked me out of his bedroom.

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Chris Dyson

24/4/2017 09:30:58 pm

The games I remember playing were Hungry Horace, Horace Goes Skiing and Jet Set Willy. I don't know what it was about the Horace games I liked, probably the simplicity. What I find more and more remarkable is how crammed so much into such little space, even in the crap games.

Our Mr Withit was english teacher Mr Archer, who had something going with a couple of girls in the 6th form. I once rode past one of the girls houses on my bike on the way to Martin Gauntlet's and he was waiting outside in his sunglasses and shirt open to his navel. He pretended not to notice me. Seeing teachers out of context was usually pretty jarring but given his notoriety for bonking 6th form girls it actually seemed pretty logical.

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Pemyrolewen

24/4/2017 09:43:13 pm

Wow, you're starting something here Biffo. There's so many...I can't remember the names of half of them. 3D Ant Attack was so early in the speccy's life too- amazing. There was a dinosaur 3d game too- only one screen and there was a key hidden in the isometric "effect" but the 3Dness blew my tiny pre-pubescent mind. Anyone remember the name?
Got to include Lords of Midnight- so ambitious and just huge.
Elite too- it brought the majesty of the BBC micro's super-classic to the machine I could afford with a success I'd never dared hoped for. Played the BBC one on the kid next door's machine but there was no way we could ever afford one. £400 weren't they?
Valhalla brings back guilty memories for me. I was "up town" (in Birmingham city centre) with about 8 (yes really) mates from my street one Saturday. I'd have been 12 or 13. I spotted and picked up a handbag. It had about 90 quid in cash (absolutely loads back then, kids), glasses, medicines, cards, the lot.
Being nice kids, we went to the police. I gave my address and off we went. About 2 weeks later I got a letter from the owner, all thanks and that. And £15. Now, what should I do? Share it with all my mates who were there? That'd be the right thing, yeah?
Nah, to the disappointment of my parents I spunked the lot on Valhalla and never told my mates. £15 was a lot of money then. And it was shit.
Oh, and The Way of the Exploding Fist. Just for the name.

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Trannysaurus Wrexxx

25/4/2017 02:22:24 am

Was the dinosaur game "3D Monster Maze", perchance?

ISTR a mate buying a "1k memory expansion pack" (!!!) to be able to play that. Although I could be wrong on the details.

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Penyrolewen

26/4/2017 09:21:20 pm

Could have been, but I don't think so. I think I remember that being on the ZX81. Never had one of those (although my uncle bought a kit to build one- £150 I think). It was certainly that machine that had 1k ram packs though. And there was a game of that name so I could be wrong...

Penyrolewen

26/4/2017 09:25:07 pm

Looked on google (should have done that first maybe...) 3D monster maze was on ZX81 AND the Spectrum. But the game I remember was called Escape. It looks cack now.

Starbuck

25/4/2017 12:18:37 am

Can't disagree with any of the games mentioned by Biffo or his correspondents, however I'd also like to add The Sentinel into the pot. Immersive, reflective, atmospheric, and it pushed the boundaries of the Spectrum. Making it to the top of the landscape and surveying the world around, I now see that Breath of the Wild is pulling those same strings in me.

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Blerkotron

25/4/2017 07:44:33 am

At the risk of sounding dull, Programmer Keith was Keith Burkhill, who did a bunch of arcade conversions for Elite before moving on to Activision to do the same. And then in the 90s he made a load of console games that you probably remember fondly:

http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,69199/

These days he writes games for a gambling and casino company, it seems. Which isn't even *nearly* as good as Space Harrier, unless they also throw a rock in your face when you lose.

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Bum Doctor Needed

25/4/2017 11:41:58 am

Hello. I accidentally put an egg up my bum earlier today, and now I can't get it out. Is this the right place to look for a bum doctor? I can pay handsomely.

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Col

25/4/2017 11:07:49 pm

You'll have to shell out quite a lot.

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Im Not Here

26/4/2017 09:45:23 am

Surprised nobody has mentioned Robocop, or r-type of which the Spectrum version was probably the best conversion of the time. I would add Tir Na Nog to the list of good Spectrum games as well.

And slightly off topic; I had a demo tape with a platform/adventure game for adults - you woke up hungover naked and had to find your clothes without being seen by anyone. I have never been able to remember the name of the game. I was pretty young so I have no idea if I found it funny because it was funny, or because it was nudity (well "nudity") and swearing that I knew I shouldnt have been playing.

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THX 1139

26/4/2017 03:03:01 pm

My dad would get obsessed with certain Spectrum games, Elite was one, and Urban Upstart was another. He did manage to complete it, though. Presumably thanks to that beautiful electronic rendition of Come Fly With Me.